[Talk-ca] SOTM 2010 Bid for Ottawa?

Yves Moisan yves.moisan at boreal-is.com
Fri Nov 13 12:28:03 GMT 2009


> "Barcelona because of the combination with FOSS4G: OSM will not be the
> centre of attention"

Sleeping over it, I feel I need to make some nuances to my email of
yesterday.  I know, Emilie, I told you I wouldn't post again on this
subject so that it doesn't snowball, but for the sake of balance, please
forgive me that post.  I don't want to go through a bulleted list of
cons.  I'll just say the cons of back to back conferences I see are
practical in nature.  They may be summarized as : too much geekness in
one week.  

The argument of SoTM being shadowed by FOSS4G is more valid in 2010 IMO.
In 2009, FOSS4G was a 3-day event.  In fact, for most people it was a
4-day event : users had the workshop day before and developers had the
sprint day after.   People from the industry also had a 4-day
conference : they had to set up their booths on the day before the
conference.  And "geeks" probably had a 5-day event ...  

This year, FOSS4G is slated as a 4-day event.  I don't know if that
counts workshops though.  All that to say that maybe the strongest
practical cons of holding back to back events is that it may be too much
for one week.  So less time for people to visit the city (I assume most
people will book one week in their agenda, so conferences on weekends
seem impractical to me), less time for para-conference events, for
networking ...  And maybe that would mean SoTM gets squeezed too much.

Ideally, the opinions from people that attend both conferences should be
sought.  

Cheers,

Yves





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